


nostalgia in reverse

by Eddaic



Category: Gintama
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Relationship Development, at the end, implied former takazura in the background, mature themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-14 01:52:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11197980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eddaic/pseuds/Eddaic
Summary: (It was raining that day, when the ghosts came and hung themselves around his neck and made it their home.)





	nostalgia in reverse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [korisnik](https://archiveofourown.org/users/korisnik/gifts).



**nostalgia in reverse**

One evening, when rain has smeared the carcasses of cherry blossoms on the flagstones, Takasugi sinks into a bathtub filled with scalding water and thinks of Bansai.

Bansai, who had donned Takasugi’s old military jacket that morning. Bansai, who had said nothing, but pushed a cup of steaming tea towards Takasugi. Bansai, whose eyes in the dim light had seemed darker, closer to umber than hazel – Takasugi could imagine those eyes bright with concern or lowered in grief. He could imagine them being warm. Something coiled in Takasugi's belly; he was reluctant (not afraid, no) to identify it, so he called it revulsion.

“Is something the matter?” Bansai asked. Calm, toneless. If he’d been anyone else, Takasugi would have reached for his katana and thrust it into his chest, would have taken comfort in the blood seeping into the futon.

Takasugi rasped, “Leave.” Sweat slid from his brow down to his nose, his chin. “Take that off.”

Bansai had blinked, but otherwise showed no hint of confusion, and done as told.

Takasugi lowers himself further into the water, already turning tepid because of the hostile weather. He raises a hand and the skin is blotched pink and cream. A dab of red would look good with it.  

It is not uncommon for Bansai to borrow his clothes after their meetings – floral-patterned yukata and kimono that he drapes over his shoulders like skins. They are too fine, too dreamlike for Bansai’s hard lines and stiff bearing. Still the view does not fail to arouse Takasugi; the fabrics are like the bruises trailing down Bansai's throat – markers of possession.

But Takasugi’s old clothes, the ones from the war – those always lie at the bottom of his drawers. Even his yellowed hachimaki is folded along with them. He tells himself they’re a reminder of his hatred. (He knows that his hatred is its own fodder.)

***

“You were bold.”

“You wouldn’t have said anything if I’d asked about it.”

Takasugi takes Bansai’s face in his hands, pushes one through his hair before making a fist. The wince would have been unnoticeable to a stranger, but Takasugi has settled into Bansai's being, has carved all its foibles and sensitivities to memory. He squeezes Bansai’s jaw – any harder and he’ll crack the bone. He wants to, as a whimsy, to hear the sound it will make.

But in his position, while fear is useful, respect is crucial; and Takasugi dislikes using force on his subordinates. “Here, I’ll cuff you, man-slayer,” he says lowly, “and I’ll do more than that next time you raise the topic.”

He lets go and walks out before Bansai can respond.

***

At times Takasugi goes to the sea, before the sun has risen. It is one of the few occasions on which he does not bring his kiseru.

He has had many people mistake him for being fond of the night, but it is not shadows he takes pleasure in, practical though they are for concealment. Rain he dislikes most of all. (It was raining that day, when the ghosts came and hung themselves around his neck and made it their home.)

At the cusp of dawn there is a crunch of sand, and Bansai steps up beside him, his hands in his pockets. There’s no music spilling from his headphones. Takasugi thinks he ought to be annoyed – he had wanted to be alone – but Bansai’s presence is as unobtrusive as air. It had been one of the reasons Takasugi recruited him.

After the sky is washed a pale blue, Bansai shifts, just a tad, and Takasugi says, “Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re thinking too loud.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” says Bansai. But after a moment he pushes up his shades (an uneconomical gesture, out of character) and says, “You won’t miss the way the light touches the water, after we’ve destroyed everything?”

Takasugi brushes the bandage over his eye with his fingers. “No. I’ll be dead.”

“And me?”

It is unlike Bansai to talk of himself. He favours merely responding to other people’s words and affairs. It would be foolish to assume he is  _fearful_  of the goings on of his own life, of his own desires; but he seems not to care for them. Certainly, he is not unselfish; killers usually aren’t.

Takasugi buries his surprise and says, “Whatever you wish.” He feels skittish, gropes for his kiseru, remembers he’d left it behind. He refuses to curse and let Bansai know of his annoyance.

Bansai is holding something up to him. A packet of cigarettes. “They’re mine.”

Takasugi knows better than to think it is sycophancy. On the packet is a picture of diseased lungs, raw and choked with ash. Livid. He pictures himself with a cigarette dangling from his mouth and his lip curls. It is something Sakata would do, that godless traitor, that hypocrite. “How unrefined,” he mutters, returning his attention to the sea.

***

 _It looks like a mouth being sewn shut_ , Takasugi thinks with fascination, as Bansai works a needle through the lips of the wound. Takasugi doesn’t know where he learnt how to treat injuries (he was a hitman, not a soldier), but Bansai’s ministrations are more soothing than the clinical service of a physician.  

“Didn’t look like he intended to kill you,” says Bansai.

“He didn’t.”

“Foolish.”

“He’s always been a fool,” Takasugi mutters. He grunts, satisfied, when Bansai ties a knot and breaks the thread, and stretches his torso a little to see how much it hurts. There is a sharp pain, but the injury is nowhere near his worst. “Sentimental. Attached. It’s how he is.”

Bansai casts the bloodied cloth in the bowl of water beside them and begins to stow the medical tools away in a bag. “So you’re saying he won’t cut you down?”

“Not him, no.”

“I daresay it will get him killed.”

Takasugi barks a mocking laugh. He bears no fondness for his ex-comrade, but even Takasugi will not make the mistake of underestimating him. “You’ve never fought Zura, have you?” He slips, sometimes. Forgets to say Katsura. It would be the tasteful thing to do; they are enemies, after all.

A faint line forms between Bansai’s brows. Suspicious, ho.

“Am I not permitted to call him Zura?” Takasugi says with a smirk. Teasing Bansai rarely has its intended effect, but this seems to vex him. What a spectacle. 

“You can call him anything you like, I daresay,” returns Bansai, turning away and zipping up the medical kit. There is a thin terseness in his voice, and it floors Takasugi. “I’m just surprised you use that nickname.”

“He’s been Zura for most of my life.” When Bansai makes to get up, Takasugi says, “Change my bandages.” It’s the closest thing to an apology he will offer.

Bansai hesitates. A half second. Too long for him.

Takasugi lets Bansai kneel behind him and begin undoing the dressing.

***

He knows little of what happened before he woke to find Bansai lying prone on the dirt. (The rage, frigid and righteous _,_  bigger than the sky, had swept in after the confusionconcerngrief). Since then, they haven’t had much time to talk, and even Hagi’s gentle weather does not abate Takasugi’s urgency.

The last time Takasugi was tired was sometime during the war. His temples throb and his legs are like sacks of sand but it’s almost a pleasant sensation, distinct from the dull exhaustion that consumed him over the past decade. Nonetheless he longs for rest. (He cannot stay, but his body aches for the serene affection tucked in swaying grass and wooden floorboards; the memory of the terakoya had for long been his only foothold.)

He’s patting the dirt over Oboro's corpse (alone – this has nothing to do with the Kiheitai) when he receives word of the goings on in Edo.

Shortly, he has his group gathered. Bansai stands by his side, looking ahead. Takasugi wonders why his right hand is still here when there’s nothing in it for him anymore, when the axis of the Kiheitai has tilted in another direction.

“We go with Katsura and Sakamoto,” says Takasugi. “Those two can’t handle a war by themselves. They’re not built for it.” And he has not fully reconciled with them, but on this he will remain silent. Zura, in particular, rankles like an old wound; Takasugi could almost smell the bitterness rolling off him when they last met. There will be words, Takasugi knows, and then Zura will sulk, as he is wont to do, all moues and lowered gazes and sullen silences. But he’ll come around; anger is not a natural part of his whole.

Takasugi is too experienced ( _too old_ , he thinks, not for the first time) to be jittery, but he stays up later than necessary, leaning against Bansai and smoking. Their bare skin is sticky from the sultry warmth wafting in through the open window.

At length Takasugi sets down his kiseru, turns Bansai’s head towards him with a finger, and kisses him, tasting the sake they'd shared after their dinner. Bansai feathers his hand over Takasugi's ribcage, the calluses hitching on scar tissue. Takasugi catches Bansai’s wrist and raises it to press his lips against the coarse knuckles; a strange peace has settled in his bones.

They never speak of their…whatever they have, and yet Takasugi finds himself saying, “You know this isn’t your duty, right?” He detests the churning in his gut; he's past his teenage years.

Bansai’s eyes gleam like the embers in Takasugi’s kiseru. (Takasugi remembers being taken aback when he first saw them – he had expected Bansai’s eyes to be as muted as he was). “I’m aware,” he says, holding Takasugi’s gaze, and then kisses him, impatient and graceless, on his mouth, his jaw.

At daybreak Takasugi wakes up alone. His Joui uniform is ironed and laid out on his desk. An outrageously brazen move, but after the astonishment, Takasugi finds he is grateful for it.

When he sees Bansai later in the hallway they exchange a look, and it is easy, routine – welcoming. Perhaps he had not, entirely, settled into Bansai's being.

He looks forward to doing so.

_-finis-_

**Author's Note:**

> Written to 'Since I've Been Loving You' by Led Zeppelin. Title from _Mary_ by Vladimir Nabokov.
> 
> Comments are love.


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